LEYTON: Housing bosses set to use a hawk to keep nuisance pigeons away

By Safira Ali

A HAWK will be used to scare pigeons which are blighting a Leyton estate.

L&Q housing association will be introducing the Harris Hawk to patrol the Beaumont Estate with a handler to get rid of nuisance pigeons.

A spokesman for L&Q housing association said: “We have been talking to residents on the Beaumont Estate and they have told us that the pigeons are causing a real problem. Installing netting or pigeon spikes is not always effective, and it can be very unsightly, so we have been consulting with residents about other options.

“We had similar problems at another L&Q development in Greenwich and found that bringing in a specially trained hawk worked wonders.

“The hawk breaks the habit of the pigeons frequenting an area, and at the end of the programme hawk kites are installed to maintain the deterrent.

“The hawks are very tame and fully insured for public handling, so the children on the estate can interact with the birds and watch what is going on.

“It’s a slightly unusual solution, but the feedback from residents in Greenwich was very positive so we will look at trying it on the Beaumont Estate.”

Local Liberal Democrat councillor Bob Sullivan welcomed the plans. He said he had had numerous complaints from residents about the roosting pigeons messing up their homes.

Cllr Sullivan said: “It is very unusual. Pigeons are a problem all over the place. They roost on the balconies of the flats causing a mess.

“Hopefully the hawk will be able to chase them off. A few people have complained to me about the pigeons. It has been an ongoing problem for years.

“They also roost on the bridge across the road. That is a classic place for pigeons. Putting netting up keeps them away for a while but not for long.

“If they get a hawk it shows that they are looking into the problem. It is something that has to be looked at. It will be interesting to see how it works.”

About Pigeon Patrol:

Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.

Revealed: the mechanism that allows birds of a feather to flock together

Pigeons loaded with GPS backpacks show the secrets of co-ordinated flight control

Anyone interested in the democratic process could do worse than study the group decisions made by pigeons in mid-flight. Scientists have discovered that pigeon flocks are governed by a kind of “democratic hierarchy” that makes sure everyone flies in the same direction.

With the help of tiny GPS backpacks carried by each member of a loft of pigeons, researchers have discovered how large numbers of animals are able to instantly co-ordinate their movements to ensure that they do things as a group rather than as anarchic individuals.

Although the principle has so far only been demonstrated with a smallish flock of Hungarian pigeons, the scientists believe it could also operate on much bigger groups of animals, such as schools of fish and herds of wild buffalo, and might even explain how close-knit groups of people, such as juries, manage to reach a single decision.

“Anyone who has seen flocks of birds or schools of fish is familiar with this phenomenon of large numbers of individuals in a fast-moving group appearing to move in a co-ordinated way, and it’s not immediately clear how they coordinate themselves,” said Dora Biro, a zoologist at Oxford University.

“Our question was, how do groups like flocks of pigeons make decisions about what to do and where to go?” Dr Biro said.

The GPS backpacks carried by the pigeons enabled the scientists to precisely monitor the birds’ movements, relative to each other, every 0.2 seconds of their journey from the point where the scientists released them to their home loft in Budapest, 15km away.

“Previously, people had assumed democratic decisions, where every bird’s preferences are somehow averaged out, and that’s what the group ends up doing. Or there might be a single leader or a small number of leaders that everyone follows,” Dr Biro said.

“But what we were able to do by tracking these birds with individual GPS units was to resolve the leader-follower relationship within the flock. What we found was a more sophisticated and refined mechanism for how the decisions are made,” she said.

“There wasn’t a single leader, nor was there a kind of egalitarian decision-making where everyone had an equal vote. Instead, each bird did have a vote, but the weight that each vote carried differed between birds.

“It represented a kind of hierarchy where the decisions of some birds near the top of the hierarchy carried more weight in terms of what the birds did than the birds lower down the hierarchy, who were still influential but to a lesser degree,” said Dr Biro, who carried out the study with Tamás Vicsek of Eötvös University in Budapest.

“Whether such effects come from some individuals being more motivated to lead, or being inherently better navigators perhaps with greater navigational knowledge, is an intriguing question we don’t yet have an answer to,” Dr Biro said.

The loft of pigeons in the study consisted of 10 birds whose every movement was recorded as they flew in a flock from one location to another. The analysis, published in the journal Nature, described how each bird moved in relation to its neighbours, with some individuals leading more than others.

“It’s neither a completely democratic system, where everybody gets the vote, nor [one with] a single leader or a few leaders responsible for the decisions. But in fact every individual gets a kind of input into what the group as a whole should do,” Dr Biro said.

“If this was honed by evolution, if there was a selective advantage for individuals in the group to make decisions in this way, then it might represent a particularly efficient form of group decision making… It is possible that the mechanism we saw in these pigeons generalises to other species and to other group decision-making contexts, even in humans,” Dr Biro said.

About Pigeon Patrol:

Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.

A woman who fed a bit of a sausage roll to a pigeon in the street has been fined £150.

Sally-Ann Fricker said she was out shopping in Bath with her daughter and her two young boys when a pigeon landed in front of them.

She broke off a corner of the snack and threw it to the bird which immediately flew off with the morsel.

Bath and North East Somerset Council said anyone caught littering faced a £150 fixed penalty fine.

About Pigeon Patrol:

Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.

CHICAGO (CBS) — Pigeons; they’re tolerated at best, hated at worst. Now, one Chicago alderman wants to make it a crime to feed pigeons.

CBS 2’s Dana Kozlov reports some people are calling the proposal by Ald. James Cappleman (46th) a bird-brained idea.

Uptown, downtown – pigeons are everywhere in Chicago.

Thursday morning, Barb Wambach was visiting the Christkindlmarket at Daley Plaza – where dozens of pigeons gather every day, keeping warm by the eternal flame – when she got an unpleasant surprise dropped on the boot-shaped mug she was holding.

“I moved my cup, and it felt like something plopped in it,” Wambach said. After a group of pigeons flew overhead, she found a splattering of bird droppings on her mug.

It’s that threat to everyday living, that fear of walking under a viaduct, the scourge of flying birds that Cappleman wants to eradicate.

He has introduced an ordinance that would significantly increase the penalties for feeding pigeons – making it a crime punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.

Cappleman wasn’t available Thursday to discuss his proposal, but he told other aldermen he’s tired of encountering a scene from a Hitchcock movie every time he walks to the Wilson station on the CTA Red Line.

Scores – if not hundreds – of the birds perch at the station, just waiting to be fed. A huge flock of them swarmed down to the sidewalk Thursday afternoon to descend on some potato chip crumbs like hunters on prey.

“They’re a nuisance. They’re everywhere. You know, you could stand there waiting on the bus and they’re all over your feet,” Bobby Williams said outside the Wilson stop. “I think it should be illegal to feed them.”

It’s already a city code violation to feed pigeons – as signs at the Wilson stop indicate – punishable by a fine of up to $500. Cappleman’s proposal would double the maximum fine and add the possibility of up to six months in jail.

“It’s silly. He should be focusing on other problems,” Oliver Guyton said. “Like the budget and all that type of stuff that aldermen do.”

In May, Cappleman was assaulted by a woman in Uptown, after he started sweeping away the breadcrumbs she had spread on the ground for pigeons near Broadway and Wilson Avenue.

At the time, the alderman said the area is littered with breadcrumbs every day and has a serious pigeon problem. He has also said the breadcrumbs people leave for the birds could attract rats, too, so his staff regularly cleans up breadcrumbs left on the streets.

Orignal by – DANA KOZLOV (CBS)

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Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.

Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products eight years in a row.

Network Rail paid out £28,000 after a passenger ‘possibly slipped’ on pigeon poo at Paddington station. Details of the incident at the west London station – in which the victim hurt their leg – were revealed in response to a Freedom of Information request by the BBC.

A total of more than £950,000 was paid out by Network Rail for 290 claims over the past five years for slips, trips and falls resulting in compensation claims at the 20 stations it manages in England and Scotland.

In some instances this included money towards claimants’ legal costs.

The largest single payout was £40,000 after a passenger ‘slipped on some liquid and landed heavily on their right hip’ at London Charing Cross.

Network Rail’s head of claims and insurance, Philip Thrower, said: ‘We’re a big company that takes our responsibilities seriously. With tens of millions of people using our stations every day; only a tiny fraction of a percent experience a mishap. Horse waits for train on South Shields metro platform

‘If we are at fault for causing damage or injury to anyone, we rightly compensate them for those accidents and put in place new ways of working to stop them from happening again.’

Other accidents which led to successful compensation claims include:

A passenger slipped on an uneven surface while walking towards a train at Euston (£17,000);

A large puddle of water caused a passenger to slip while crossing a bridge at Leeds station (£10,000);

A passenger slipped on ‘discarded tomato sauce’ on the concourse at London Liverpool Street, hurting their wrist and both knees (£6,000).

Victoria station in London was the location for the most successful claims, with 44. This was followed by London Waterloo and Leeds (both 32), Euston (27) and Liverpool Street (24). The lowest amount paid was £10 after a passenger suffered ‘personal injury and damage/messing to suit’ when they slipped on ice at an entrance to Victoria.

Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.

Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products eight years in a row.

CHENNAI: A number of pigeons are swarming the Chennai airport premises for the last three days. Authorities were forced to hire a nomadic community to shoo them away.

Efforts by the airport personnel to shoo them away have failed; as the birds come back again and again, giving anxious moments to the authorities.

Many birds were spotted around the runway today, authorities requisitioned the services of Narikorava community, who are well versed in shooing them away using traditional techniques.

The gypsies were on the job to shoo the birds away, and have been very successful.

As part of the State Safety Programme, preventing wildlife (bird/animal) strikes to aircraft was identified by Directorate General of Civil Aviation as one of the most important safety priorities.

Have a Pigeon Problem?

Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.

Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products eight years in a row.